


Quartz

by orphan_account



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon), 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mineta Minoru Doesn't Exist, Bakugou Katsuki Swears A Lot, Crystal gems are only briefly mentioned fyi they may not take full precedence in this story yettt, Dealing With The Fact That Your Entire Life Is A Lie: A Memoir By Steven Q Universe, Friendship, Fusion, Multi, Parental Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead, Parental Yagi Toshinori | All Might, Plot Twist, Set before Heart of the Crystal Gems, Spoilers for Episode: s05e18 A Single Pale Rose, Steven replaces him ahuhuhuhu, bit of angst, featuring Steven as Ultimate Wingman this time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-08 02:58:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15233853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "I...I need a minute to think."It's all he needed. One second on the beach to think, to think about everything he'd learned. It was all some sort of lie. He wasn't mad... Well, he wasn't mad at Pearl. For hiding it for so long. But the cacophony of emotions inside of him was too much, and he just wanted to step out for a minute onto the beach and take a deep breath before walking back into his home.Isn't it strange how in just one minute, your entire world can be flipped around?





	1. Aftermath

"I...I need a minute to think."

In all the chaos that had followed (which, in Steven's defense, he didn't know Garnet and Amethyst were standing directly behind him, but maybe it was better to rip the bandaid off than slowly tug at it), with Garnet unfusing, Sapphire storming off in a hurry and Ruby left by herself, with Pearl attempting to not collapse in on herself again, and with the truth about  _who_ Rose Quartz truly was, Steven hadn't even had a moment to think about it.

He'd been projected straight out of Pearl's gem, and then everything happened, and the truth of it hadn't sunk in yet.

Amethyst glanced over at him, standing back a bit from the chaos-- at least Pearl was walking slowly towards Ruby, to console the smaller gem-- and nodded, as if to mean,  _go, take what you need._ Take all the time you need.

He didn't want to take forever, but. He needed just a few minutes outside. To maybe bubble himself and scream underwater so no one could hear it. Yeah, that sounded good.

The door closed probably a bit too loudly behind him, but Steven was still feeling...numb. There was so much but so little to feel. Something was telling him that he should've known for a while that Rose Quartz--  _Pink Diamond_ \-- wasn't exactly what she said she was. Especially at the trial, with the diamonds staring down at him, and accusing him of using his mom's sword to shatter Pink Diamond.

A sword which could only destroy a gem's form, and never, ever, the gem itself. 

He doesn't even bother using the steps. Ever since he found he could float, he began using it instead. It's more  _fun_ that way, after all. Even though his stomach drops when he feels gravity tug at him, there's the familiar resistance before his feet carefully find themselves on the sand, and Steven is facing the ocean of Beach City.

It's peaceful. It's a distraction from the chaos of his house. It was already feeling better, but yet, worse at the same time. He'd have to find Sapphire and console her. He'd get Garnet back together, and they'd all work through this. Together, as a family. Pearl needed it, Garnet needed it, Amethyst needed it. After all, it's finding out that their entire lives and what they stood for... could be a lie.

_\--His entire life is a lie--_

"No." Steven mumbled to himself, plopping himself in the warm sand. The waves are just able to wash over his feet as they crash on the shore. "There has to be more to this.  There has to be more to everything." Stay positive, he told himself. There's a reason that his mom would do something like this, he doesn't know the whole story. Only the revelation.

He closed his eyes, and allowed himself to just  _be_ for a second.  _Take a moment to think of just, flexibility, love and trust..._ Take a deep breath. Inhale, exhale. 

He wished that in that moment, he would open his eyes and find himself back on the beach outside Beach City, ready to go face the problems, ready to go help his family. 

But it didn't happen.

* * *

 

His eyes opened to another beach. Steven did notice a slight  _shift_ in the sand around him, but he'd assumed it was the wind, or something. 

Not that he'd ended up on a different beach.

Steven quickly checked a few things off the list-- he wasn't dreaming. Or he wasn't  _aware_ he'd fallen asleep, and everything felt real. He was grounded to reality, not floating in a fast place. Just to make sure, he tried to summon Dogcopter. Not to mention, the beach he'd opened his eyes to was completely different from any he'd been on.

Nope. No dog-helicopter fusion in sight. Dang. 

It was full of trash. Giant, heaping piles of junk. It's almost as if someone had dumped off old electronics. It reminded him of Amethyst's room at the temple-- cluttered and messy. 

Of course, there was no one around. No one  _should_ be around a beach like this, Steven included. It was dangerous to be close to giant piles of trash that could fall on you at any minute. Someone should clean it up! Just think of the poor environment...

"Oh, wait, this isn't Beach City." As if it wasn't obvious. 

And  _cue_ the freaking out, right on time.

Where had he managed to get? Was this another one of Rose Quartz-- eh, Pink Diamond's-- powers he didn't know about? He was getting tired of this! Waking up in someone else's body, finding out you can float, accidentally making a large sentient watermelon people society-- and now some sort of strange teleportation? He only hoped that he was close enough to Beach City to get his dad to come pick him up, or a warp pad was nearby...

Steven pulled out his phone, and quickly called his Dad, but for some strange reason...

_"The number you have attempted to call is disconnected. If this is a mistake, please try and call again--"_

"What?" That was weird. His dad always had the same flip phone, as long as he could remember. Even with all the riches in the world now (well, not entirely), he still held onto that old phone, but upgraded Steven's in a snap for a random surprise. "C'mon, Dad..." He tried to call again, but got the same message. He tried to call other people he knew-- Connie, second, and someone picked up, but they  _were definitely not Connie._ Amethyst's number was a dud, and Garnet had no phone. 

After searching through Pearl's mind for who knows how long and accidentally breaking his entire world, Steven called it as a last resort.

No answer. 

Well,  _heck._ That was great. He was stranded with no one to come and help him. He dusted off the sand on his pants before he started walking, carefully through the trash to not disrupt anything. If anything fell, he was sure he'd bring out his bubble in an instant (it was more instinct now than anything), but he didn't want to have to bring that out. 

_Okay. This is weird. I woke up on a random beach and I don't know where I am... Could this be a multiuniversal fan-fictional crossover event?_ Gah, Connie was always more up to date with tropes than he was! Either way, he was still stranded.

Luckily the beach was connected to some sort of town, but what Steven found... definitely shocked him a bit. Nothing like meeting a man who had a literal  _chihuahua_ for a face.

_Alright, this is a little weird._ But he moved on, only to find a few more people with abnormalities that he couldn't explain. They all seemed so unique and amazing at first glance, and Steven was really beginning to think he'd ended up somewhere that was definitely  _not_ home. He wished Connie was here, to explain it all to him. He wished  _anyone_ was there at that moment, so he wouldn't be wandering around in a weird town alone, but unfortunately, fate was not kind to Steven Quartz Universe.

* * *

Neither was fate kind to Yagi Toshinori. It had been a very, very rough day for the holder of One For All.

He'd been doing heroic deeds for all but twenty minutes when he started to feel the time slip away. His first thoughts were one of worry and fear--  _I can't lose this quirk, I'm still training my successor--_ but it just seemed to be a bad day in general. There were heroes out on the hunt, younger heroes with better strength and stamina than he could muster up that day, so maybe he'd just let them do their work.

His successor was still at school for the day. He had to find something to do, and that something was running errands. But unlike other days, this day was different.

A young boy, possibly close to the age of ten, maybe twelve, came up to him randomly. His hair was curled, and he wore a light red shirt with a large star printed on it, and seemed rather normal. But there was something  _off_ about this boy that Yagi couldn't place. Perhaps it was just the effect of a quirk, but at the same time... It wasn't like anything he'd felt.

And as All Might, Yagi would like to think he felt a lot of things, even before  _that_ battle. He'd gone up against villains who could cause fears come to life before your very eyes, worked with heroes and many other people whose quirks gave off a certain emotional air, but never anything like what  _this_ boy felt like.

"Excuse me, sir?" He spoke politely, which was nice to hear. Almost like young Midoriya... "Do you mind telling me where I am?"

He must've been some sort of tourist, separated from his parents. Surely his mother and father-- or mother and mother, father and father, who was All Might to judge and assume?-- were worried sick, trying to find him.

Yagi told the boy the street name they were currently standing on, but when the boy looked upset and confused by it, he immediately felt something was wrong. What if this boy had just-- dare he think it-- escaped a group of villains? Children being abducted by villains was incredibly uncommon, but Yagi had been witness and had been hero to some of those cases where young children had been taken hostage, or kidnapped, missing for days to years, before being reunited with the world. Could he have just escaped. "Where are your parents, young man?"

"Well..." The boy glanced away, as if that was a long story. "Not here, I guess. I'm not even sure where  _here_ is."

"You're in Musutafu, to start with." The boy blinked at him. "In...Japan?"

"Oh, wow. That's far from home." Yagi choked back blood. It wasn't the context of the speech he needed, the way the boy had nonchalantly  _said it_ was what got him. As if it was just a minor inconvenience.

"Where are you from?"

"Beach City. It's in America." The boy said. He was American? And he'd just... _what?_ Who knew such a small child could be so  _confusing._ At least Midoriya is simple and easy to understand, if a bit of a crybaby... "Thank you, sir!"

He began to walk off, but Yagi quickly stopped him. Even though he'd never raised kids in his life, he had a niece out in America he would visit every now and then, though that was quite rare nowadays. He'd felt a soft spot immediately for the young Midoriya when he saw the quirkless boy run into danger to save a friend he isn't sure is very nice to him to begin with, but everything about this boy, the way he walked and talked, was setting alarms off everywhere. "Now wait, young man."

The boy turned and looked at him.

"You're far from home, in a place I don't assume you know. Do you want me to take you to the station? They can help things get sorted out--"

"The police? No thank you, I'll be fine." The casual way he spoke, the dismissal of the police...More red flags went off in Yagi's brain. He had to figure out how to help this kid. Even if it was a random kid he'd just met, all of his All Might hero instincts were kicking in, and he felt like he had to help  _somehow_.

"If you're not confident with the police, then let me at least take you to where you came from." It wasn't safe for a boy as young as him to be walking around, even if it was in the middle of the day. 

"Okay. I think I kinda lost my way, anyway." He nervously laughed, scratching the back of his head. "What's your name?"

"You can call me Toshinori." The boy nodded, giving him a big smile. One that could almost rival his own. "What's your name, young man?"

"I'm Steven!" 

 


	2. A Bit of Truth

Steven and the man-- Toshinori, he'd introduced himself as-- walked back down the road that Steven thought he'd come from. But at this point, all the roads in this town looked the same (well, definitely different from Beach City but indistinguishable from the next one over), and he was afraid he was even more lost.

"So tell me, Steven. How did you end up in Musutafu?"

Oh, right, that was the town they were in. Steven shrugged. "I kinda... just found myself on this beach? There was a lot of trash on it, too. It was kinda sad."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well... I closed my eyes at the beach at my home. And then everything kinda felt weird for a second, but I thought it was just some wind. And I opened my eyes, and I was here!" He added jazz hands at the end to add more to the story. 

"Huh. Does it have to do with your quirk?"

"My  _what_ now?" Quirk? What does that mean? He'd never heard the word quirk used like that. Like some sort of proper noun, not just a regular noun.

The man seemed shocked, but cleared his throat behind a fisted hand. "Your, uh, power."

"My power?" He shook his head. "No, I don't think so." Even if there were some bits of his powers he'd never heard of from the other Crystal Gems, some of which he believes might have developed on his own for  _him_ , he doesn't think that sudden world-hopping is a new power of his. But it was weird, to hear a man casually ask about his powers... He shouldn't know about them. Steven was no stranger to keeping his hybrid-ity a secret, but this is a man he just met! "How'd you know?"

"About what?"

"About my...powers?"

"Your quirk?" Now the man was confused. This was just a mass confusion party, to add another layer onto the cake of "Steven's Whole Life Is A Lie, Apparently". Now this? "Tell me again, where you're from."

"Beach City."

"What state?"

"Delmarva."

"That state... doesn't exist."

_Oh._ Oh, that confirmed all his suspicions. Somehow he'd ended up in a different world, parallel to his. That's the only thing that could make sense to Steven, at that point. After all, he'd seen people with dog heads and he was pretty sure he saw someone cough up flames, and none of them were Gems. 

"Well..." He stopped walking. Could he trust this man, Toshinori? Well, there wasn't anyone else around, and Steven was prone to trusting people too easily. "...Maybe not in this world, I guess."

"Oh.  _Oh._ " If not for the circumstances of Steven's existence in that world, he would've loved to take a snapshot of Toshinori's face and have it with him forever. It was a pretty funny face. The man quickly collected himself, however. He cleared his throat, wiping at his mouth. "Another world, you say?"

"Yeah." Despite thinking that the man wouldn't believe him, Steven watched the older man shrug it off and continue with everything. "So, um, what was that word you used again? Quirk?"

"Oh, yes." It was probably incredibly awkward for the both of them to talk about the basic things in this world as if Steven was a toddler. But he wasn't, he was fourteen, thank you very much! "Ah, it is a... 'superpower', I suppose."

"Really? Does everyone have them?"  _Superpowers?_ He'd watched anime with Connie about superheroes (or, well, it was more of just the  _powers_ , aspect), he'd read books before, but in his experience, his powers were because of, well. Aliens, he supposed. Aliens and his mother giving him the gem stone.  _His mother, Pink Diamond--_

"About eighty percent, yes." Toshinori responded. He glanced around. They'd ended up at the beach that Steven had "woken up" at, and he got a good glance at the name-- Dagobah. Wasn't that the name of some kingdom in the Elf Wars series? Well, maybe names just happened to appear in different worlds for some reason. "Is this the beach you, uh...  _found_ _yourself_ on?"

Steven nodded. "Yep. I didn't know what it was called, sorry."

"You're fine." 

After a moment of silence, with both of them watching the sun set , Steven started to realize his situation. It was _that_ late in the day, and he was afraid of what was happening at home. What was Pearl doing? Amethyst? Were they looking for him? What about Ruby and Sapphire? He had stepped out to get a second to think, a second to breathe. And  _now_ look at the situation he was in. He was away from home, in a world he didn't know--

"Young man, are you okay?"

"Y-yeah." He hadn't realized he'd started crying. Steven pushed the tears from his eyes. "Just...I guess I don't know what to do now."

"Come with me. I'll help you figure it out."

* * *

 

Yagi wasn't expecting guests that night. But with most of the  _official_ people closed for the day, he invited the young boy to stay the night at the apartment he owned. It was small, and all he had in it aside from his own room was a futon bed that was never used, and an extra towel. The apartment was a bit of a mess, still. Things were still being set up, everything was a bit overgrown, but...

Steven didn't seem to mind, thank  _god._ The boy was more excited over the television than anything else. He also commented a bit on the greenery scattered in the apartment. Apparently, one of his friends-- Peridot, was it?-- enjoyed gardening as well. 

What was he going to do with the boy? Out-of-universe experiences weren't normal in professional heroics. No one ever found someone who wasn't from this world. Not that the boy was an  _alien_ , but he also had no paperwork, no identification, nothing. He came from a world where people didn't have quirks (but, he made comments about his powers, so he might have been an exception), and the boy was a bit lax in explaining a lot from his home, only asking questions about  _here._

"So, Toshinori, what are we going to do?" Steven asked as he sat down on the couch. The boy probably had been walking all day. Had he even eaten at all today? There was a bit of leftover rice that could be heated up...

"I have a few friends who work in the government. If you're going to have to stay...in this world... for a while, then they can make some paperwork up for you." As legally as they could. How would one randomly explain "Woke Up In A New World" to the government? Hopefully this had been some sort of quirk accident... "There will be some way for you to end up going home, but I'm afraid it won't be tonight."

"I kinda figured." Though Steven looked sad as he was, there was still a glimmer of optimism in it. And a bit of...relief, too? There was so much  _mystery_ to this boy, aside from the fact that he was from another world.

"Are you hungry? I don't have much at the moment, but I can throw something together."

"Oh, sure! Thank you, Toshinori!" Steven gave him a big smile.

This boy reminded him so much of young Midoriya. Yagi couldn't help but smile and nod as he made his way into the kitchen and pulled out the extra rice he had. If only today had been the day he went to the grocery store! Unfortunately that was not the case, today was the day he had to hassle his way to get some sort of internet access into the new apartment, and then some, including young Midoriya's training session. It was surprising that Steven had woken up on Dagobah, and neither of them had seen anything from him at all. Perhaps they were at the other ends?

"Feel free to turn on the TV while I'm cooking." He called out to Steven. He didn't want to just leave the boy to fiddle his thumbs while waiting for rice to cook. 

An affirmative sound was heard from the small living room, and he heard the click of the television turn on. There were a few channels that Steven skipped through before landing on one channel-- the news. Familiar voices filled the empty home-- people he'd been interviewed by, the news he'd watched as a kid, and other sorts of voices. As soon as the rice was done, he poured two bowls, returning to the living room.

Steven had become infatuated with the news, turning to Yagi with starry eyes as he walked in. There was some big-shot hero on the news, talking about an event that had happened that day. "You didn't tell me there were  _superheroes_ , Toshinori!"

Oh, no. This  _was_ going to become a new Midoriya.

"Ah, sorry." He passed the bowl of rice over to Steven. "I suppose that it slipped my mind. But yes, professional heroics is big here." _In this world. Which you wouldn't have known,_ so why did Yagi expect him not to? It was weird to have someone not know anything about the world around you. It was almost like...An American had decided to visit.

Which, in a way, was true. Steven had said that the state he was from  _was_ in America. But not his America.

"That's so cool!" He remarked, turning back to the television. "Can anyone be a hero, or can only certain people become a hero?"

_Good question._ A month ago, he would remark that heroes are the people with the most powerful quirks. But now, now it's different. "Well,  _anyone_ can be a hero. Becoming a professional hero, however, takes a lot of hard work and training. Most start young, around high school age, entering into a special academy for it, before graduating and getting a license. It isn't all it's glorified to be in the news." But Yagi wouldn't have any  _other_ job.

Or well, he probably should have another job, damn injury. But his selfless nature can't stand just sitting by when he is a vessel for a powerful quirk. 

"By the way... Earlier you mentioned something." Talking about heroics and  _quirks_ brought the one little detail back up again. "When I asked you of your quirk, before you didn't know what it was... you said something about your powers?"

"Oh, yeah." Steven carefully set his bowl of rice to the side before lifting his shirt. Where his navel should've been was a bright, pink gemstone. "It's a long story, but this is the source of my powers." He dropped the shirt, and demonstrated, summoning a pink shield on his arm. It was decorated with thorns, and a duplicate of his gemstone in the very center. It looked like an overgrown frisbee, but it looked  _powerful._ "I can do other stuff, too! Like, I can summon a bubble around myself, Connie's told me I'm a bit stronger than normal 'humans', I can bring plants to life- That is a fun story in itself that involves a lot of watermelon, let me tell ya-- and I can-- Oh, Toshinori, are you okay?"

_Holy hell._ This kid's powers would rival anything the professional heroes had today. And he was just  _nonchalant_ about all of it as well, and there was a wide variety that he could do. And some of it was left unsaid, even, interrupted by Yagi's shock! This kid was powerful and could, quite possibly, be deadly. 

"I-- sorry. What you've described is, well... very powerful."

"I guess, kinda. Though even I don't have good control over it sometime. That's where the watermelon comes in, though I've gotten better at that. A lot of my powers are related to my emotions, and I'm still learning to control them." He explained. "But Pearl and Amethyst and Garnet are helping me learn them! Oh, they're my, uh, family back home." He clarified upon seeing Yagi's confused look.

Though, Yagi only had a few thoughts--  _what had he gotten himself into._

* * *

 

 

He felt bad that he had to cancel today's training session with young Midoriya. He sent him a quick message over texting--  _'An incident came up today and I won't be able to make it. I apologize. Follow the 'canceled' day schedule. Don't over-do yourself! --All Might "_

A quick response was received as he got the response.  _"okay, i will! :D"_

Another quick response.  _"I mean, "okay I will" as in, I'll follow the canceled day. Not that I'll over-do myself."_

Steven had collapsed quickly on the couch and the night passed with no issue. He'd fallen asleep sometime in the middle of recanting the story of how he'd accidentally made an entire society of living watermelon. Yagi wasn't sure, but the boy didn't seem to be over-exaggerating. He just hoped he was. 

As much as he had other things to do, and daily incidents were calling him to be a hero, to fufill his duty as All Might, he had to take Steven to local government offices, to get him paperwork of some sort. Yagi wasn't going to be harboring an  _illegal alien_ , after all! Many people didn't believe him at first, but there was no record of any "Steven Quartz Universe"  _anywhere_ in the world, so they had to make one. At least they were a bit lax on everything.

They also had to, well... "register" Steven's "quirk". Steven seemed a bit too excited about this over everything, as he told the one office worker everything he knew he could do, and even then, it felt like he was holding back. There was no mention of "watermelon" people in it at all, only showing off the shield that he had summoned the night before, a bubble around himself, and a spiked bubble, which he looked especially proud of. The office worker was charmed through and through by him the whole time, especially as Steven showed off the gemstone that was attatched to his navel. Or, was his navel. Steven wasn't entirely sure.

The entire quirk was registered under one name-- Quartz, though there was hesitation when he'd said the name. Yagi wasn't sure why, and as much as it upset Steven, maybe it was a bad topic to ask.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey whats up you guys go follow my tumblr while you're at it [@theotheghostkid](http://theotheghostkid.co.vu/) and feel free to scream in my inbox about whatever. ;)
> 
> also writers block sucks this chapter is bad but hey!!! i get to move the plot around gotta keep going gotta keep going

**Author's Note:**

> hi i'm trying to deal with the hiatus thats gonna follow after the heart of the crystal gems. wow.  
> this is set before everything in the heart of the crystal gems, btw. i started planning this, like, *then*, not *now*, lol.


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